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Guidance on data security

The University needs to keep certain sensitive information protected: sometimes this is for legal or ethical reasons, sometimes for business reasons. Relevant information includes:

personal data relating to students, e.g. their marks

certain research data, e.g. relating to human subjects

sensitive information about University business.

There are a number of things you can do to protect the data that you handle :-

Consider whether you can reduce the amount of sensitive data you take outside the University and its network without adversely affecting your work - e.g. access and process the data remotely via an ssh login or via the remote desktop service.

If you have any mobile device (smartphone, tablet, laptop) which you use to access University data, you must ensure that it is both password/PIN protected and protected by encryption. This applies regardless of whether the device was purchased by the University, is personally owned or belongs to a third party. This protects against less casual access by someone else if you lose the device. Information about how to encrypt your devices, for various operating systems, is provided below.

Passwords used to access University systems or data must not be used to access external services such as Facebook, personal emails etc.

Use strong passwords, and configure your machines appropriately -- e.g., if you habitually sleep your machine rather than shutting it down, so that if it were lost or stolen it might be in the sleep state, make sure it asks for the password on waking.